Call me narcissist if you must but this blog is all about ME. I have another blog about my kids, whom I love and adore writing about. But I was Nicole a long time before I was mom and I don't intend to give up being Nicole overnight.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Uncle! I cry Uncle! I haven't gotten around the posting today's movie quote. You may not realize the amount of effort I put into each Monday post. I don't simply rely on my own memory, or even the internet, which is often wrong. (I know, you're shocked) Oh no. I actually put in each movie I use a quote from and make sure I am quoting it exactly right, word for word. And well, I just haven't gotten around to that part yet. Sigh.

And since I still have miles to go before I sleep I don't plan on getting around to it today.

So instead of putting it off and doing a Tuesday Edition again this week I decided that I am going to let YOU, my faithful reader, quote YOUR favorite movie and see if I can guess it.

Go ahead. See if you can stump me. Could be fun. :) I won't even cheat and try to look it up. If I don't know it I'll admit so. How's that for a fair deal? Will you play along?

Sunday, June 28, 2009

In the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, Church member Jay Hess, an airman, was shot down over North Vietnam. For two years his family had no idea whether he was dead or alive. His captors in Hanoi eventually allowed him to write home but limited his message to less than 25 words. What would you and I say to our families if we were in the same situation—not having seen them for over two years and not knowing if we would ever see them again? Wanting to provide something his family could recognize as having come from him and also wanting to give them valuable counsel, Brother Hess wrote—and I quote: “These things are important: temple marriage, mission, college. Press on, set goals, write history, take pictures twice a year.”

She then handed out paper and pens and challenged us to imagine we were in the same situation-having only 25 words to communicate to our family whom we haven't seen for 2 years and who we don't know if we will see again. What would we say?

So this is what I came up with.

Jesus is Savior. Atonement is real. Be generous. Serve others. Pray always. Be believing. Be responsible for choices. Eat your dinner because I LOVE YOU.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

I set for myself only 2 "deadlines" when it comes to my blog. Monday and Friday. Only two. That should be completely achievable! Right?

Yea, well, about that. Let's just say this is why I don't get paid to blog. I think you have to actually meet your deadlines when somebody is paying you to write. Good thing the only person I disappoint when I miss mine is my 1 faithful reader.

So, since I missed yesterday's edition of Name that Movie Monday I thought that today instead of making you guess the movie I'd just give it to you. Because it's kind of obscure anyway.

Raise your hand if you've seen the movie Stealth. Anybody? Anybody?

I hadn't either until this weekend. I had, however, seen the preview for it about half a dozen times. So when I saw it on the cheap rack at Walmart I thought what the heck.

And since I'm always on the lookout for memorable movie quotes here is my favorite line from Stealth

Ben: You and me we're....we're 2. 2 is a prime number, which makes it a lucky number. And i think we're very very lucky.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Friday, June 19, 2009

Your patience has paid off! As promised today I have for you a Flashback Friday that will make your day! But do not take a sip of that chocolate milk before watching the video below or you will be sorry. I promise.

For your viewing pleasure I have put together the most memorable bloopers from my college days and my time spent doing the campus newscast: ATV News.

Maybe it's only funny to me because I was there and know the entire back story to each and every blooper. But I'm hoping that even if you weren't there you can find the humor of the situation. (wait, isn't that a BNL song?) Because I find it HILARIOUS!

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The news is reporting the 5th known death from Swine Flu in the state of Utah. Which hits a little too close to home for me knowing that there are been confirmed cases of it in my neighborhood. In fact not just in my neighborhood but right in my ward. (church congregation)

Which means, of course, that for the past 2 or 3 weeks I couldn't help but keep an wary eye as the sacrament was passed to the congregation during services. I'd cringe each time somebody sneezed and then reached forth with that same hand to take a piece of broken bread, knowing that soon that same tray was going to be passed to me.

So you can imagine the giddy delight I felt when reading the following passage in the book I've been reading. It's from a book called The Longest Trip Home a memoir by John Grogan. (the author of Marley and Me) He was raised in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood and here he is recounting one of his many experiences serving as an Alter Boy.

"Some priests were so skilled they could deftly pop a host on the tongue without making any flesh-to-flesh contact and almost never fumbling. But most of them, in their caution not to drop Christ's body and risk sacrilege, ended up touching the recipient's lip or tongue, then doing it again for the next person in line, and the next. Standing beside him, I could actually see Father's thub and fingertips wet with saliva. The number of germs spread in communion lines should have triggered a four-alarm public heath alert, but no one seemed to mind. What was a little shared spit among true believers who were all going to heaven anyway? Besides, it was hard to imagine the Son of God would come into your body and then let you catch a disease simply because Father's host-dispensing skills weren't up to par. If Jesus could multiply fishes and loaves and raise the dead, he could certainly make sure no one contracted strep throat from the communion line." The Longest Trip Home, pg 69-70

I can't help but think that if the Lord, who is no respecter of persons, will keep the Catholics safe from strep in the communion line that He'll also keep the Mormons safe from Swine Flu during the sacrament.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Now that it's going on 2:00 some of you thought I forgot Name that Movie Monday, didn't you.

But I didn't. I just took my kids to the park this morning instead of blogging. So sue me. (please don't really sue me. It was just a figure of speech. Plus I've got nothing worth taking.)

But first a question and a confession. What is your weakness? The one thing that is going to be the absolute death of you? Mine? It's the $5 movie rack at every store I walk into. There are so many great movies that I can't quite bring myself to pay $20 for but when I walk into the grocery store and there it sits with a $5 price tag on it I just can't help myself. It somehow finds it's way into my shopping cart before I even know what has happened. And once it's in my cart I don't have the heart to put it back on the shelf. I can't stand those sad puppy dog eyes looking back at me, feeling all dejected and rejected. So of course I have to take it home with me. I tell ya, I'm going to go dirt broke over those stinkin' $5 movies! That and buy one get one half off shoe sales.

Why do I tell you this? Because today's movie is from the $5 bargain rack. So are you ready for it? Here it is.

Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!

Sorry, no movie code today. But I saw Valkyrie over the weekend and it was fab so if you are looking for a movie to rent that is worth the buck you pay to rent it then I suggest it. In fact, I'll likely buy it on from the discount rack someday.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Does summer time make people more rude? Are we all so hot and crabby that we forget to think about others.

Not that it's been hot here yet. It's rained pretty much non-stop for 2 weeks now, nearly making me forget that we supposedly live in a desert!

Maybe that's the issue. Maybe the rain and lack of sun makes people all mopey and sad which leads to rudeness.

At any rate, last week I had my share of rude.

A sampling if you will.

Wednesday I was at Ikea with all 3 of my small children. Luckily 2 of them were able to go to smalland and play for an hour.

Which means I had the baby with me. And 3 very large items to get. So try, if you will, to picture the following. I have the baby in the stroller which I am pulling behind me with one hand. And a flatbed cart in front of me with a 100 lb dresser on it along with two very large paintings which I am also trying to manoeuvre one-handed. Quite a site, right? And yet not once did somebody who was completely empty handed offer to help me.

Mind you I made it just fine in the end. But still. Not a single offer of help. Although I did receive many judging looks from others as I pushed/pulled my load.

Thursday I took my children to This is the Place Heritage Park park. Before the day was over it started to downpour. We, of course, were still waiting for the train to arrive to take us back to our car when the rain came. One train came and was quite full, meaning we were going to have to wait for the next train to arrive.

No biggie, there was only a handful of us left waiting so I felt we'd surely get on the next train easy. Of course as we waiting several more groups of people arrived to wait for the train. I remained unworried because we were there first so they would let us get on first, or so I thought.

When the next train arrived me and my 3 small children were quite literally trampled as people crowded past us to get on the train before us. My 3 small children who were wet and cold and had already been waiting for 25 minutes to get on a train. And it's not like it was a bunch of inconsiderate teenagers who are notorious for thinking of only themselves. It was tweeners WITH their parents. Yes, the parents where not only accepting this behavior they were actually encouraging it.

I finally got desperate and walked up to the front of the train and asked the tour guide if we could sit in the front with the train driver were it was covered and warm. I thought she'd take one look at my poor wet children and say yes. Instead she said "Let me see if there is anybody else who needs to get on." HELLO!!!!! I NEED TO GET ON! I'M WET AND COLD AND IT'S PAST NAPTIME AND I JUST WANT TO TAKE MY KIDS HOME!

I didn't take no for an answer and soon we were sitting in the cab with the driver where all 4 of us were crowded onto the passenger seat but at least we were dry and warm. AND the driver was a very sweet old man who was the bright spot in the rain for me.

On the way to the car the kids wanted to take a stop at the Brigham Young house. Despite the fact that I just wanted to get in the car and go home I obliged them. On the way back down the very steep old pioneer home stairs I'm walking behind my two older kids, holding the baby when a bunch of older kids come careening around the corner and attempt to run down the stairs. I start seeing images of my small children tumbling down the steep stairs because they were bumped by these older kids so I start blocking the stairs the best I can and try to politely explain to them that my small kids are trying to go down the steep stairs (did I mention they were STEEP) and could they please slow down and wait for them to get to the bottom.

All this time the mother is standing at the top of the stairs watching me try to balance my baby in one arm while trying to keep my other two kids on their own two feet and she does NOTHING. Doesn't call her children back. Doesn't implore them to be careful or polite or considerate of other visitors. Just stands there. I wanted to cry. It was SOOOOO time to go home!

So of course the next day I'm at Lowes and I see a man in the parking lot struggling to load some plywood onto his truck. The issue was not really loading the plywood but rather the fact that each time he turned to put another piece on his truck his flatbed would start to roll away and then he would have to run after it. So guess what I did-I offered to hold the flatbed in place for him while he finished unloading it. And guess what-it only took me about 20 seconds to be polite. And hopefully it made his day. And hopefully it will create a little good karma for me and this week will be filled with a less rude people.

It's ALMOST ready. The original bloopers reel was over 20 minutes long so I've been hand picking the funniest moments and re-editing it with some titles so help explain the maddness. And well, it's done but not perfected yet. And I don't want to show it to you until it's perfect.

So can I have one more week to get it ready for you? PLEASE? I know I can't keep making promises that I can't keep or I'll lose the 2 faithful readers I have. I just want it to be just right.

Instead I came up with something for today's Flashback Friday that I hope you find equally funny.

I know that what happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas.....so I'll change the names to protect the innocent. :)

So I begin with a question. Why do we insist in taking embarrassing pictures of ourselves and our closest friends? Pictures that can be used against us at some later date? Why do we do this? Why?

See the weekend before I left on my mission I went to Vegas with my mom and her sisters. (My aunts, for those of you who are family tree challenged) For reasons that I still will never understand I allowed my mother to take this picture of me.

Frightening, I know. But that's not the worst part.

While on my mission my, er, not cousin whose name I shall not mention.....went on a similar trip with the same crazy chaperons. And she let them take this picture of her.

So, of course, when Mike and I were dating we passed through Vegas on our way to California and I coerced him into this picture.

Oh wait, I'm changing names to protect the innocent. That picture is not of Mike. It's some guy I may or may not have dated at some point in my past.

To his credit he was mortified by the prospect of this picture. It took a LOT of begging! And even after all my heartfelt pleas and arguments about how it's tradition he HAD to do it he utterly refused to stand with his head between them.

You're right, maybe I should've let these pictures stay in Vegas after all.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

I'm always slightly amused when I'm somewhere super exotic, like Dollar Tree, spending the impressive amount of $5 and the cashier asks for ID when I swipe my card. I always comply because, hey, she's just doing her job. But secretly I'm thinking "What kind of moronic identity thief would steal a credit card and then hit the dollar store for ant traps and gum?" Personally, if i had a stolen credit card I'd be buying big screen tvs online faster than you can say Amazon.com.

So you can imagine my surprise today at the library when whipping out my debit card to pay my library fine and the librarian asks for my ID. I'm thinking to myself, "you have my library card and have pulled up my account then I hand you a debit card bearing the same name as the library card and you still ask for ID?" Because how many people do you know who would steal a wallet and then immediately dig out the library card and go pay any outstanding fines. I mean really.

And note to librarians everywhere-if somebody else is trying to pay my fines please just let them. It would save me the time and hassle.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Flooring-finished in family room and one set of stairs. One more set of stairs left to do still.Baseboards-painted but waiting to be installedPrimary newsletter-finished!Sharing Time-a colossal failure despite, what I thought, was a well thought out idea. Sometimes kids just don't respond to what you think they are going to respond to.Quilt blocks-Not done. Not even started if you want the absolute truth. Hoping that if I plead funeral excuse and promise to have them done next month they will still give me my new ones.

On that note let's move into today's movie quote. Are you ready?

You know, somehow, "I told you so" just doesn't quite say it.

I have now fulfilled my Monday obligation to you so now it's your turn-make a guess.

I suppose I should also tell you the answer to last week's quote since nobody guessed it. The Movie is My Best Friend's Wedding.

Have a great Monday! I'm off to my quilting class. You know, the one where I'm the only one under age 50. Good Times I tell ya!

Friday, June 5, 2009

I'm in over my head. But I just repented of my non-Flashback Friday ways. So I didn't want to blow it off completely. AND while looking for the clipart CD that I use for my newsletter I came across a DVD that I have been trying to find for months now. A DVD that is going to make a hysterical Flashback Friday.

But, as mentioned before, due to the craziness that is my life this weekend I don't have time to rip it and upload it and give it the proper presentation. In fact I don't even have time to be blogging, and yet and I am. I was working on my Primary newletter and I actually have all of the content written, But due to the untimely demise of laptop my template that I created for the newsletter has been lost. So my kind husband is working on the layout for me and I'm sneaking in a little blogging while he's not looking.

Thus today is the teaser for next week's edition of Flashback Friday. (I can use words like teaser because I was a broadcast journalism major.)

And speaking of my college days that is what next week's Flashback Friday is all about. And you now know that it also includes a video. And yes, I'm in it. But so are many other USU broadcast journalism students. So believe me when I say it's laugh out loud, pee your pants, spit milk through your nose funny!

And I can tell it is way past my bedtime because I have started every sentence with and, but, or so. My high school English teacher would be so proud!

I must now return to the insanity. Do NOT miss next week though. I PROMISE I will make it worth your time!

Happy Weekend ya'll. (I'm not even southern. It MUST be past my bedtime.)

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

I have sharing time this upcoming Sunday. (In layman's terms I have to entertain 50 kids ages 3-11 for 2 hours Sunday afternoon plus somehow actually manage to teach them something about Faith as well.)

On top of that I also am in charge of our monthly Primary newsletter that goes out on the first Sunday of every month. Which means I need to get that written and printed before Sunday as well.

Then, I have my Quilt Block of the Month class on Monday which I have FOUR quilt blocks that are supposed to be finished. It's normally only 2 but I missed last month's class for the funeral in Nevada. And, of course, I haven't even cut them out yet, let alone started sewing them.

So why, I ask you, did I think that tonight at 9:30 pm it would be a good idea to rip out the carpet in the family room? Why I ask you? why?

Well, I did get tired of Zoey peeing on it. (Which she did yet again today.)

And I have been dying to put in laminate because I hate doing my aerobics on the carpet.

And I noticed that the neighboorhood clean-up dumpsters were up the street tonight. And they are typically only there for 24 hours.

So,Ｉused that small detail as leverage, somehow convincing my husband that if we pulled out the carpet tonight we could throw it in the dumpsters and then lay laminate this weekend.

Doesn't that sound like a grand idea?

So at 12:02 in the morning my family room looks like this:

This one complete with a Ryan sitting on the couch eating his Sonic bacon toaster that he bought when he went to get us all free root beer floats.

And as I sit here staring at the large cracks in my foundation concrete the reality of what we just did is starting to sink in and I'm thinking I must suffer just for fun.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

About a month ago I got an email that basically said hey you have a great blog and we would like you to tell your readers all about our blog. At first I was like wow! Somebody likes my blog. And then reality set in and I realized my blog likely met some keyword search critera and that nobody actually READ my blog before sending me that email. Because well, as loyal my followers are (thanks for that, by the way) there are barely a handful of you. In other words, I'm hardly what you could call and influential blogger.

A few days later I got yet another email requesting that I promote a website and this time I didn't let it go quite so much to my head.

So you can imagine the skepticism I felt when I received the following comment on my blog.

Congratulations!

Your blog has been nominated for the 2009 Utah Baby Guide Blog Contest. The blog that gets the most votes wins! Voting ends June 30th, 2009.

Especially since I've had spam comments in the past. (before turning on word verification) Comments that served no other purpose than to get you to click over to somebody's insurance site.

My suspicion was furthered by the fact that my other blog also got the same comment. And when I've been spammed in the past both blogs got hit.

But finally my big head telling me "this one might actually be for real" got the best of me and I clicked to it.

It does look like a legitimate site. I think. And my Sister-in-law's two blogs are nominated in different categories which leads me to believe that maybe she nominated me (Thanks if you did!!!!) Or maybe she didn't. Who knows.

And so this is the part where I shamelessly beg for your vote. Because hey, it would be cool to win something! Plus you don't even have to register. Simply email contest@utahbabyguide.com and tell us the web address of your favorite blog for each category before June 30, 2009.

This blog is nominated in the Personal Blog category, right beneath Dooce. Yea right, like I'll win. But hey, it's a nice thought, right?

Monday, June 1, 2009

Today is a special day here on Name that Movie Monday because, being the first Monday of the month, there is actually a free Redbox code today. HOORAY!!! So you BETTER use it because by the end of the summer there will be no more free movie goodness.

So-here is your quote.

It's amazing the clarity that comes with psychotic jealousy

Mwahahahaha. That's funny stuff, if I do say so myself.

I also thought it would be fun to give you a little movie star trivia so maybe those of you who NEVER GUESS would still stop by on Mondays, even though there aren't as many free movie codes anymore.

So-today I thought I'd tell you which prominent stars have a birthday today, June 1st.

Morgan Freeman turns a young 72 today.Andy Griffith turns an even younger 83. Think little Opie is coming over for some birthday cake?And, Marilyn Monroe was born this day back in 1926.

So, there you go. And here for reading this far down I shall not reward you with a free movie code: FM63H7

AND for those of you who complain that you never know the movie if you think you are better at guessing songs you can hop on over to Shades of Blond for Name That Tune Monday which I happen to terrible at! How is that for poetic justice?